Will There Ever Be Another World's Tallest Building?

foreign build tall buildings from the Tower of Babel to the pyramids Saint Paul's Cathedral the Eiffel Tower and finally that great 20th century invention the skyscraper we've always yearned to touch the sky the skyscraper is both a symbol for Mankind's Limitless ambition and an immensely practical and profitable solution to our increasingly urbanized lives however the economics of the skyscraper has long been a contentious subject building higher can increase Revenue as each additional floor creates opportunities for retail office and residential spaces for decades conventional wisdom said that 63 stories was the optimal height for a skyscraper building any less essentially leaves money on the table while building higher risks overshooting construction costs living developers without a profit while 63 stories may sound precise it is in fact a rough figure that clearly depends on a variety of conditional factors but it illustrates the argument at a certain point skyscrapers are no longer economically feasible beyond that point they ceased their practical purpose and become something else this is no more apparent than in the race to build the world's tallest building where the limits of practicality knock against the expanse of human ambition the last century has seen the title change hands from building to building no less than nine times but with the construction of Dubai's Burj Khalifa in 2010 a building that jumped more than 300 meters higher than its predecessor we've seen that race cool and perhaps end the Burj Khalifa is the first structure since Chicago's Sears Tower to hold on to the title of world's tallest building for longer than a decade in that time competing projects to the Burj have come and gone brought back down to Earth by mounting costs and their own impracticality the desire to be the tallest appears to be fading have we finally found the meeting points of hubris and economics have we built the world's last tallest building [Music] thank you the Burj Khalifa is an icon and it was built to be one 2020 marks a decade since the 828 meter high tower officially opened the culmination of five years of construction work from Foundation to Spire more than 10 years of planning and some 22 million man hours plans for the tower first emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s Keen to diversify its economy away from the oil industry and to leave its mark on the world the small port city of Dubai began to invest heavily in creating tourist attractions and turned its side that most superlative of construction titles the world's tallest building at that time a number of projects were attempting to overtake the reigning Patronus Towers in Kuala Lumpur the Shanghai World Finance Center and the 508 meter Taipei 101 were both already under construction and the long gestating World Trade Center had Ambitions to bring the title back to New York Dubai officials didn't want to invest in constructing the world's tallest building only for its record to be broken a few years later by another project they wanted to create a building so high that it would rain as the world's tallest for decades this was a building made to be awe-inspiring Skidmore Owings and Merrell envisaged an unheard of 62 percent increase in height from the last world's tallest to put that in perspective over the past Century no other Contender has gone higher than 19 including the Empire State Building foreign the construction of the Burj Khalifa was the result of a perfect storm an alignment of key components needed to create such a structure funded by a city eager to prove itself on the world stage combined with a near bottomless pit of money to draw from none of the usual requirements and restraints of practicality applied here and no one questioned whether a city with a little more than a million people needed a 1.5 billion US dollar skyscraper foreign [Music] since the Burj Khalifa's opening a number of projects have sought to take its crown in 2013 the 838 meter Sky City Tower was proposed in China an incredibly ambitious pre-fabricated projects that would have been built in just 120 days foundations were laid but safety concerns and a failure to obtain proper approval from the government pushed the project back and it stalled the foundations are now used by locals as a fish farm China has had several other notable proposals [Music] in 2014 there was the sujo zhongnan center which was also set to reach 838 meters construction stalled in 2015 and the project is now officially on hold Saudi Arabia's Jeddah Tower is by far the closest a building has come to taking the burge's crown the project shares a number of similarities with the Burj rising from a small desert city with aims to move away from an oil-dependent economy and backed by a government with a near endless amount of money the tower is even designed by the same architect Adrian Smith and employs the same y-shaped floor plan as the Burj an Innovative technique used to offset wind loads the Jeddah Tower had plans to rise to a thousand meters making it the first man-made structure to reach the kilometer High Mark construction started in 2013 and was set to take just over five years to complete however the projects currently sits at a height of around 260 meters with work appearing to have stopped sometime in 2018 there are several reports that the tower is officially on hold a virtual kiss of death for a project like this several factors have led to the scheme stalling including the much publicized anti-corruption Purge of 2017 which claimed two of the building's most prominent backers growing costs and the shifting priorities of the Saudi government [Music] not to be outdone Dubai announced its own competitor with the Dubai Creek Tower a 1 300 meter high observation structure that would have dwarfed both Jeddah Tower and the Burj Khalifa while foundations were laid in 2017 no progress has been made since and with construction on the Jetta Tower yet to resume there seems to be little motivation for them to continue [Music] so where will the world's next tallest building come from the most obvious answer would appear to be China the country has money to spend a vast Urban population and an eagerness to prove itself on the world stage yet China's cooling economy has seen a number of recent Mega projects canceled or postponed it's worth noting that taking away the burj's vanity height the highest occupiable floor of China's tallest building the Shanghai Tower is just two meters below that of the burgers if the birds didn't have its nearly 200 meter high Spire the towers would be approximately the same height while Shanghai Tower is an impressive architectural icon of modern China the building has been played with astoundingly low occupancy rate crippling debt and bureaucratic red tape that has delayed tenants who have been ready to move in for years these problems are made painfully visible at night when half the tower fails to light up as such China's reluctance to invest in another Mega Tool structure so soon after the failures of Shanghai Tower is perhaps understandable India also has Ambitions to compete with Dubai unveiling plans in 2017 for a new tower in Mumbai the plans were immediately met with an outcry from locals who pointed to the country's considerable socio-economic problems much needed public infrastructure and food and water shortages all seen as far greater priorities than building a large skyscraper building the world's tallest building is now such an immense undertaking that it cannot be achieved by developers alone that's why looking back over the last few decades in skyscraper construction these remarkably tall buildings are no longer named after corporations but after cities and countries the days of the Sears and Patronus towers are gone we now have Taipei 101 and Shanghai Tower even the Burj Khalifa's original name was the Burj Dubai before it was renamed in honor of the ruler of Abu Dhabi these projects require an enormous amount of money behind them they also require the rewriting of local building regulations and flight paths they need the unequivocal support and oftentimes the financial backing of their governments otherwise they will never get out of the ground this perfect storm needed to create the world's next tallest building a booming economy a near endless supply of money a desire to be put on the world map and uncategorical support from the government now has to match the immense height that Dubai has already presented to the world it was a lot easier to build a 500 meter plus skyscraper 10 years ago than it is to build an 800 meter plus one now currently there isn't anywhere in the world that has the financial backing and ambition to beat Dubai and Skidmore Owings and Merrell may have achieved exactly what they were asked to when first conceiving the Burj Khalifa to create the world's tallest building that would last [Music] so will we ever build taller is this the end of the race for now it would seem so when the Empire State Building opens to the public 88 years ago actress Faye Ray said when I'm in New York I look to the Empire State Building and feel as though it belongs to me or is it vice versa that is what great construction accomplishes the Empire State Building was so tall so Grand that it seemed almost impossible it was Unthinkable that anyone could build taller and it took 40 years for its record to be beaten [Music] why do we build tall buildings because we can and when the time is right when that perfect storm appears again we will [Music]

Channel: The B1M

Views: 1,826,785

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, worlds tallest building, burj dubai, burj khalifa, burj, dubai, china, shanghai, shanghai tower, taipei 101, jeddah tower, dubai creek tower, india tower, mumbai tower, saudi arabia, empire state building, world trade centre, petronas towers

Id: T4CCY9RJeD4

Length: 12min 11sec (731 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 11 2019